By now, anyone who is even remotely related to an IT-type position has heard about Linux, and has most likely used it, if only to see what all the hype is about. However, GNU/Linux is not the only "free" Unix type OS available. FreeBSD and its cousins, NetBSD and OpenBSD are all offshoots of BSD UNIX, a commercial UNIX also known as Berkeley Software Distribution. This article will help you learn more about FreeBSD, its differences from Linux, and it will ease a potential migration process.

I used to use Linux, but I got tired of the bugs, instabilities, and upgrade headaches. I gave FreeBSD 4.3 a try and haven't felt the urge to go back since. The FreeBSD development process is far safer than that of Linux, since changes are tested in a -CURRENT tree and backported to -STABLE, after which -STABLE goes through several prereleases before and actual release is provided. No sudden rewrites of the VM system in a new release, etc. I can't imagine going back to Linux for actual work, although the hardware support is nice for dealing with digital cameras, downloaded porn and music, etc.

Contrary to at least one of the previous comments, the ports system really does know how to detect required software that has already been manually installed, since it looks only for the presence of the required files and not a package or port.